Dr. Jill Biden and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article calling for her to drop the doctor in front of her name has become a flash point.
If the President Elect’s wife wants to be called doctor and she has the degree, she has a doctorate in education, that is well and fine for most of us. A person from the WSJ has offered his opinion in an op-ed piece that she should drop the doctor title. His reasoning is a little, well I would say biased. And I will leave it at that.
But unfortunately he did have a valid point. The title of doctor in front of one’s name in today’s world typically denotes that the holder of this title is a doctor of medicine.
The title of doctor comes from medieval universities who conferred it as the university’s highest degree. It had nothing to do with being a medical physician back then.
From History Extra is even more information, “Anyone with a doctorate can be called ‘doctor’. The doctor’s degree was a product of the medieval universities; this higher degree simply conferred the right to teach.
It could be in law, theology, philosophy or medicine (and other disciplines now). The medical hierarchy of practitioners was physician, surgeon and apothecary, and each had defined functions. Physicians, who had gone to university, were the real ‘doctors’, and surgeons and apothecaries, who trained by apprenticeships, were ‘mister’.
But the verb ‘to doctor’ is also very old, and has meanings outside medicine too: to change something, whether in a human body or an inanimate object. This ‘doctoring’ verb made it easy to call medical practitioners ‘doctors’.”
So what has this to do with Jill Biden? Not very much at all. Unless you want to recognize that the meaning of things changes over time. For example the word gay meant something else before it became what it means today. In the not too distant past gay meant to be good-natured or happy. But it did have a secondary meaning.
From The Straight Dope, “Although many people believe “gay” simply meant lighthearted or cheerful until it was shanghaied by the preverts, the truth is the word has long had a secondary connotation of sexual licentiousness. As early as 1637 the Oxford English Dictionary gives one meaning as “addicted to social pleasures and dissipations.”
Thus word meanings do change over time and being gay is just one example. Now you are again wondering what has this to do with Jill Biden? Well the simple answer is since the title doctor has changed from one who has earned a doctorate to a person who is a doctor of medicine (a physician or surgeon, etc.).
Making the use of putting Dr. in front of their name is confusing if they are not a member of the medical profession. In other words the best thing Jill Biden, PhD ED should do is drop the title doctor in the front of her name as it has changed in meaning.
I know, now all of those left wing women are going to comment on how sexist I am. Well all of you are 100 percent wrong! Being a doctor means to me and most people that one is a physician or such, not one who has earned a PhD. It is too confusing and in a word, just silly to continue misusing doctor in the way Jill Biden is using it. Now I will state that if she wants to be called doctor to her face, that is fine with me. But its meaning has changed and everyone should accept this and move on. In no way should Jill Biden be denigrated for having earned a PhD in Education. She earned it and no one has the right to disrespect her because of it.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
